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Re: NetBSD/vax



On 2020-03-19 18:08, David Cooper wrote:
I know that those models of VAXen don't like SCSI drives over 2GB because of
the set of SCSI commands they understand.

Actually, they work perfectly fine with large SCSI drives. It is only the driver in the ROM that have a problem, and that is only relevant at boot time.

So if you have something like NetBSD, just make the root partition less than 2GB, and you're all set to go. Once the OS have started, you are using the driver in the OS instead, which do not have that limitation. And with NetBSD, booting happens only from the first partition, so if that partition isn't bigger, then the boot image being read in will be below the limitation of the driver in the ROM, and then you're fine.

  Johnny



-----Original Message-----
From: port-vax-owner%NetBSD.org@localhost <port-vax-owner%NetBSD.org@localhost> On Behalf Of
Erno Palonheimo
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 11:41 PM
To: Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost>
Cc: Johnny Billquist <bqt%update.uu.se@localhost>; Anders Magnusson
<ragge%tethuvudet.se@localhost>; Rod Smallwood <rodsmallwood52%btinternet.com@localhost>;
port-vax%netbsd.org@localhost
Subject: Re: NetBSD/vax

On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 01:03:19PM +0200, Erno Palonheimo wrote:
On 2020-03-17 12:50, Martin Husemann wrote:
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 10:47:28AM +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
The system can be installed, and get to run, but it probably require
some manual work.

I think fixed all low memory issues in the install media some years
ago, but of course new issues might have come up and went unnoticed.
Back then booting from CD and installing worked on a 3100 with 24 MB
(my only currently available test machine has 128 MB and I have no
spare SCSI disks any more to test installations - but of course we
can test in SIMH).

FWIW, I had 8.0 running (slowly) on a MicroVAX 3100m30 with 24
megabytes of memory. I netbooted the installer and it worked just
fine. I might reinstall NetBSD on the machine in coming weeks and can
report how it goes.

So yesterday I did this. Installer ran its course fine but the system would
not boot - kernel hangs right after bootloader messages, before the kernel
itself prints anything out. Then I remembered this same thing happened with
8.0 and I actually fixed it, but apparently my patch was never incorporated
and thus I need to build a custom kernel for it to actually boot. Back then,
Ragge asked me to send him a diff so he could commit it, which I did, but
looks like it was forgotten.

Here's a link to a diff against 8.0 that will probably apply just fine to
9.0.

https://esp.iki.fi/netbsd-8.0.lcg0.lkkbd.patch

-e



--
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt%softjar.se@localhost             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


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